Kalvakuntla Kavitha, daughter of former Telangana chief minister and Bharat Rashtra Samithi president K Chandrasekhar Rao, launched a new regional political party on Saturday, seven months after being suspended from her father’s party over an internal feud that fractured one of Telangana’s most powerful political families,, according to news media agency PTI.
The new outfit, named Telangana Rashtra Sena, was unveiled at the Adhya Convention Centre in Hyderabad before a large public gathering, with Kavitha vowing to champion the “aspirations and unfinished agenda” of the state.
Kavitha’s New Party: What Is Telangana Rashtra Sena?
Kalvakuntla Kavitha, daughter of Bharat Rashtra Samithi chief and former Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, formally launched her own political party on Saturday — drawing a definitive line under months of bitter estrangement from the family-led regional outfit that once defined her public life.
The new party, named Telangana Rashtra Sena, was unveiled at the Adhya Convention Centre in Hyderabad, whose sprawling 20-acre grounds were converted into a large public gathering for the occasion.
The launch had been signalled only the previous day, when Kavitha announced plans to establish a new regional political force, asserting that it would focus on the “aspirations and unfinished agenda” of the state.
A Symbolic Start: Tributes at the Amaraveerula Stupam
Before taking the stage, Kavitha paid floral tributes to those who died during the 1969 agitation for a separate Telangana state, at the Amaraveerula Stupam in Gun Park, Hyderabad — a deliberate invocation of the statehood movement’s sacrifices, and a signal that the Telangana Rashtra Sena intends to plant itself squarely in that emotional and political tradition.
The name itself carries resonance. The BRS — her father’s party — was originally founded as the Telangana Rashtra Samiti, the organisation that spearheaded the decades-long campaign for statehood. It was renamed Bharat Rashtra Samiti in 2022, a rebranding Kavitha has since characterised as a betrayal of the party’s founding purpose.
From Suspension to Sena: How the Family Feud Unfolded
The rupture between Kavitha and the BRS was neither sudden nor clean. She was suspended from the party in September 2025 following remarks in which she accused her cousins and senior BRS leaders T Harish Rao and J Santosh Kumar of “tarnishing” the image of her father and BRS president K Chandrasekhar Rao in connection with the Kaleshwaram lift irrigation project, constructed during the BRS’s tenure in government.
Her suspension was framed by the party as punishment for “anti-party activities.” Kavitha saw it differently. Following her expulsion, she lashed out at Harish Rao and Santosh Rao, accusing them of “planning to destroy our family and party” in connivance with incumbent Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy. She subsequently resigned her seat in the Legislative Council and, in the months that followed, channelled her energies into Telangana Jagruthi, a cultural organisation she heads, using it as a platform to remain visible on public issues ahead of Saturday’s formal return to electoral politics.
In Her Own Words: “The People of Telangana Are My Family”
Speaking to ANI ahead of the launch, Kavitha was pointed about the circumstances of her departure — and emphatic about what drives her forward. “The BRS party was made to fulfil the regional aspiration of Telangana, but they changed their name, work and the very soul of the party, which resulted in the breaking of their bond with the people. When a party gets distracted from its fundamental core issue, then it cannot survive. We need a regional party for the unfulfilled agenda and aspirations of Telangana, which will be our party,” she said.
On the question of whether she left the BRS or was pushed out, she was unequivocal: “The BRS party, of which my father is the president, has expelled us. We haven’t left them, neither the family nor the party. We have been expelled. I don’t want to go into that. But I am a daughter of Telangana. I have the blood of Telangana, the grit of it. We are very stubborn, very committed to our goal. We have spent 20 years of our lives in the Telangana agitation. To develop Telangana, to fulfil its aspirations, whether we have our old party or not, whether our family is with us or not, I believe the people of Telangana are my family. The fragrance of Telangana’s soil will drive us.”
What Telangana Rashtra Sena Means for the State’s Politics
Saturday’s launch positions Kavitha as an independent force in a state where her family’s political influence — built over two decades of agitation and governance — once went largely unchallenged. Whether the Telangana Rashtra Sena can convert the emotional capital of that legacy into electoral reality remains the central question.
What is beyond doubt is that Kavitha has chosen the harder path: building from scratch, without her father’s apparatus, against a Congress-led state government under Revanth Reddy, and in implicit competition with the very party her family created. The arena is familiar. The odds are not.
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